


Angle of Repose

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Fluff, Gen, Hot Springs & Onsen, Humor, Japan, No Plot/Plotless, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Fill for the kink-meme prompt: "Nice things for CrowleyIn response to the sudden flood of Crowley-whump, can I request something nice for him? Literally anything. He gets to pet a soft kitty, go for a walk with Aziraphale, sit in a cozy spot in the sun, I don’t know. A quiet night in with cuddles. Just... something."Paper knickers and Michelin stars aside, Crowley enjoys his trip to Japan with Aziraphale.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31
Collections: Break in Case of Emergency: Fluff and Love, Good Omens Kink Meme Anonymous





	Angle of Repose

It was hardly surprising that Aziraphale adored Japan and its sashimi, ramen, tonkatsu, okonomiyaki, and so on and so forth. Kaiseki cuisine was exactly the sort of thing about which the angel was sure to go into rapturous soliloquies for years if not decades to come. And Crowley certainly hadn't expected to dislike Japan. They'd have picked a different place to visit if he had.  
  
But he hadn't expected to love it just as much as Aziraphale did, if not more.  
  
The utter dreadfulness of stuffing oneself into a train car only to have more people crammed in after, stop after stop, was beyond anything he could have thought up on his own; and the map alone of the Tokyo rail network looked like something one might dig out of a shower drain, yet with nary a sigil in sight. Then there were the awkwardly translated signs and notices; the endless cacophony of announcements, insipid jingles, and warning sounds all competing for attention; the multiple layers of plastic packaging one needed to peel away to eat a single tiny biscuit; and (this was just a personal thing) the beautifully constructed and beautifully maintained roads.  
  
"Love to have a drive here," Crowley had mused, admiring the blemishless, velvety-black asphalt and its precisely-stenciled lines and markings.  
  
"I'm not certain the feeling would be mutual," Aziraphale, the philistine, had muttered under his breath.  
  
They had been obliged to redo most of the rest of their hotel reservations after the first night in which Crowley had the chance to sleep on an authentic futon. It was like sleeping on a cloud, if clouds weren't insubstantial regions of excess condensation at inhospitable altitudes, and Crowley had slept through breakfast and slept through check-out. He would have dozed through lunch had not the housekeeper been so distraught to get at the room and Aziraphale so distraught to get her nose back in joint.  
  
It would have been difficult for Crowley to pick a single favourite thing about their trip, but hot springs baths had to be among the top five.  
  
The _thermae_ that Aziraphale had spent the better part of the middle ages pining for were all well and good, but Japan had _outdoor_ baths, most of them studded with rocks that were perfect for basking. Crowley knew humans basked, but they usually went about it in such a half-hearted manner that he was always surprised to see one doing it properly. And they did it properly here: saunas, hot rocks, foot baths for tourists after a hike, fragrant floor-to-ceiling cypress-wood baths, individual ceramic tubs that Crowley had to fold himself up to fit into, and more.  
  
It was over an early dinner of toriten, a kind of chicken tempura that was evidently a local specialty of the prefecture they were in, that Aziraphale mentioned yet another of the profusion of baths that the country had to offer.  
  
"How do you feel," he said, sipping his oolong highball, "about a sand bath?"  
  
"I feel," Crowley said neutrally, "that it's likely to have us scratching grit out of our short and curlies for the duration of the trip."  
  
"Oh, no," Aziraphale said, waving a hand and studiously ignoring the euphemism. "The guidebook says you'll be provided with one of those dressing gowns—what are they called?—yukata. And paper undergarments, apparently."  
  
"Oh, well, paper pants. That's me convinced," Crowley said wryly.  
  
"At any rate, if you'd rather not, there's plenty else to do there," Aziraphale reassured him. "A waterfall bath, for one. The place has three Michelin stars—it's a local icon."  
  
Paper knickers and Michelin stars aside, Crowley had to thread a needle to get to the entrance to the sand baths, sandwiched as it was between an unreasonably large sacred boulder on one side and the red-curtained women's entrance on the other. Twice on this trip he or Aziraphale had stepped too close to the red curtains and been promptly intercepted by well-meaning locals who (Aziraphale claimed in their defense) perhaps didn't realise that there were prominent English-language signs saying "women's baths."  
  
He found Aziraphale at the far end of the sand bath hall, digging one trench in the sand and already having finished another.  
  
"There's no English, but I'm going to hazard a guess that the character with the line bisecting a little box means 'middle' or 'medium,'" Aziraphale said quietly, pointing at the signs at the head of each of the troughs of sand. "And the other means 'hot.'" Naturally, he had picked a hot row.  
  
"Probably a safe assumption. Unless the other one means 'low,'" Crowley said. He stepped off the concrete deck that separated the rows and surveyed the furrows the angel had dug, the second a little broader than the first. There were blocks of wood available for use as headrests, and Crowley dropped one apiece at the ends of their trenches. "Are you going to bury me, then, or shall I bury you?"  
  
"Oh, do allow me," Aziraphale said amiably. He placed the short wooden hoe he had used to rake out his trenches back on the stack and reached for a plastic scoop. "Go on, get in. Oh, and put your towel over your face. Wouldn't do to get any in your eyes."  
  
Crowley did so. The sand beneath him was toasty warm, and as Aziraphale began to shovel more on top of him, the heat began to sink into his bones. Aziraphale worked thoroughly but efficiently from his feet upwards, though he left Crowley's toes and hands uncovered.  
  
"The guidebook says," Aziraphale said while he dug, "that other sand baths heat their sand with spring water, but here they use steam so that the sand isn't too heavy. You're all right so far?"  
  
"S'all right," Crowley murmured. "Think they're right. Would be awfully stuffy if it were wet."  
  
The sand was coarse and tended to slide right off of Crowley's angular body, so it took Aziraphale a while to get the mound complete to his exacting standards. Then he pulled the towel off of Crowley's face and tucked it in around his neck, as the other bathers had done, and dipped into the periphery of Crowley's field of view. Crowley let his eyes drift shut. Shortly, he heard Aziraphale begin to dig again.  
  
"All right on your own, angel?" he asked languidly.  
  
"The solo travelers seem to manage," Aziraphale responded. "You just relax and don't worry about me, dear."  
  
Crowley... well, Crowley could do little else, for Aziraphale was sure to scold him if he disturbed the mound atop him too soon. So Crowley began to doze. By the time the digging noises at his side ceased, he was deep under, lulled by the even pressure surrounding him and weighing down on his chest, hips, and thighs. No floating to the ceiling for him today; he was good and anchored.  
  
Some time later, Aziraphale dug himself out, brushed himself off, gave Crowley a peck on the forehead, and said he'd be in the shower room and then the regular baths.  
  
"'Ave fun," Crowley mumbled.  
  
"Don't stay too long," Aziraphale advised. "It's not good for your blood pressure."  
  
"My blood pressure—" Crowley started; but Aziraphale, the cheeky beggar, was already gone.  
  
Crowley sighed deeply. This set off a small avalanche on either side of him, but he forestalled the cascade with a stern thought. Then, satisfied that his personal dune would behave itself, he experimented. With the sand only a few inches deep, there wasn't enough physical room for him to manifest his wings normally. With a little bit of metaphysical chicanery, however, he was able to get the same sensation of dry warmth and weight on them as he had on his body. If the price he paid would be grit sifting out of his feathers for weeks to come, then so be it.  
  
It was fortunate all around that the place was open until one in the morning, for Crowley did want to enjoy the other baths as well. But first, before the restaurant closed, they shared hot spring-steamed, buttered sweet potatoes in the courtyard.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a few years since I last visited the onsen in question and they've renovated in the mean time, so some details may be inaccurate.


End file.
